Kisimi Kamara (1890–1962) was a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

tailor from

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

who was instrumental in promoting the Mende Kikakui script in the 1920s.

Early life

Kisimi Kamara was born in 1890 in the village of Vaama,

Pujehun District Pujehun District is a district in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. Pujehun District is one of the sixteen Districts of Sierra Leone. Its capital and largest city is the town of Pujehun . The other major towns in the district include Sahn ...

in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone to a Kuranko father and a Mandingo mother. His parents had long lived in the Pujehun District, a Mende predominant district. As a child Kisimi had no access to Western education, where he could have learned English. Instead his parents sent him

Arabic language school Arabic language schools are language schools specialized in teaching Arabic as a foreign language. There are different types of Arabic language schools based on their focused branch, target audience, methods of instruction delivery, cultural atmo ...

under the local Karamoko.

Kikakui

Kikakui was devised by Mohamed Turay (ca. 1850-1923), Kamara's uncle, father in law, and teacher. It originally had around 42 characters. Kamara adjusted and developed the script further with help from his brothers, adding more than 150 other syllabic characters. He popularized the script, travelling widely in Mendeland and becoming a well-known figure, eventually establishing himself as one of the most important chiefs in southern Sierra Leone in the mid 20th century. He is sometimes erroneously cited as the inventor of Kikakui. The script achieved widespread use for a time, but has largely been replaced with an

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

based on the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, and the

Mende script The Mende Kikakui script is a syllabary used for writing the Mende language of Sierra Leone. History The script was devised by Mohamed Turay (ca. 1850-1923), an Islamic scholar, at a town called Maka (Barri Chiefdom, southern Sierra Leone) aro ...

is considered a "failed script". Kikakui is still used today by an estimated few hundred individuals.

Death

He died in 1962 and was buried in his home town of Vaama.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kamara, Kisimi 1890 births 1962 deaths Sierra Leonean writers People from Pujehun District